Flight Forecast: What Travelers Should Expect Next Year

The TSA prepares to expand its "trusted travelers" expedited screening program, and airlines spend their cash on upgrading the passenger experience. WSJ Middle Seat columnist Scott McCartney on what's in store for travelers in 2013.

By

Scott McCartney

Dec. 26, 2012 6:55 p.m. ET

When you arrive at the airport and board your flights next year, you'll likely see more Wi-Fi, more seats with extra legroom, more lie-flat beds, a more speedy security process and, of course, more fees.

Also coming in 2013 are more new aircraft and major airport overhauls, as most airlines are now making profits and raising their capital spending. United Airlines, for example, says it will spruce up neglected airport facilities, such as Washington Dulles International, and add new seats and bigger overhead storage bins to aircraft. New procedures aimed at speeding up boarding are in the works at United, too.

"In 2013, you will start seeing a lot of product development," United Chief Executive Jeff Smisek told a gathering of frequent fliers last month. "We have to catch up for many years of underinvesting."

Delta Air LinesDAL0.70% will complete the first phase of a massive rebuilding of its international Terminal 4 at New York's Kennedy Airport next year and move flights out of outdated Terminal 3. It will also launch a new partnership with Virgin Atlantic Airways offering more options for getting to London and beyond. AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, still restructuring in bankruptcy court, will roll out more new planes in 2013, and maybe even a new company if a merger with US Airways Group—being studied and negotiated by executives of both companies, plus labor unions and creditors—comes to pass.

ENLARGE

The TSA aims to expand the ranks of 'trusted travelers,' studying ways to get more people in the 'PreCheck' program that routes fliers through speedier security lines.
Associated Press

Speedier Security Screening

Some of the biggest changes of the year for travelers may come at the Transportation Security Administration. TSA is pushing to expand the ranks of "trusted travelers" in 2013, and Administrator John Pistole says the agency will study new ways to get people enrolled in the "PreCheck" expedited-screening program. This moves travelers who have undergone background checks and finger printing into "old-fashioned" screening lanes where you can leave your shoes and jacket on, leave your laptop and liquids in your bag and walk through a metal detector rather than a body scanner.

TSA rolled PreCheck out to 35 airports in 2012 and screened its five millionth person earlier this month. After piloting and testing the system, "our goal is to expand PreCheck more broadly," Mr. Pistole said.

TSA anticipates more than doubling the number of travelers it will screen through PreCheck lanes, reaching an average of one million a month, by making it easier for people to enroll and by expanding the service to international flights instead of the current domestic-only.

Today, travelers can get into PreCheck by enrolling in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service's "Global Entry" program, which costs $100 for a five-year enrollment and by itself is a huge advantage for frequent travelers. With Global Entry, you go with your passport to a kiosk to re-enter the U.S. from abroad and avoid long lines at passport control and Customs inspection. To join, you have to fill out a lengthy form online and go with your passport for an in-person interview with a CBP agent at a major airport.

Mr. Pistole said TSA will study a kind of "Global Entry-lite" program in 2013 with a reduced fee and abbreviated enrollment process to get into PreCheck only, perhaps enticing people without passports, for example. TSA is also looking at allowing private vendors handle the vetting of trusted travelers, based on TSA criteria. A pilot program could start later in 2013, Mr. Pistole said. So far, PreCheck lanes are often underused. TSA wants more travelers in the program to not only better use PreCheck lanes but also to let screeners in regular lanes focus more on people who haven't undergone background checks.

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Wi-Fi will be more widely available.
Corbis

More Wi-Fi, New Fees

Travelers will find Wi-Fi available on a growing number of flights. Delta already has Wi-Fi across its entire fleet and American will complete installation of Wi-Fi on board airplanes in 2013. United will get close to half of its fleet equipped with Wi-Fi. Southwest will hit 75% of its fleet equipped by the end of January, and may roll out video on demand on board flights in 2013 if testing under way now goes well, a spokesman said. JetBlueJBLU0.52% is just getting started: Its first Wi-Fi equipped plane will fly in the first quarter of 2013.

Wi-Fi is just one way airlines are trying to get customers to spend more while traveling. American will roll out rows of seats with extra legroom in 2013 available free to top-level frequent fliers but at a cost of $8 to $118 per flight for others. United has sold "Economy Plus" seats for years. Delta rolled out extra room in coach seats last year.

Be sure to contact your airline if you have to cancel your flight. Southwest has announced it will add a "no-show" fee, charging customers who don't call to cancel before departure a fee. Southwest, which doesn't charge change fees on tickets, hasn't said how much the no-show fee will be.

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The safety of a type of x-ray scanner will be tested.
Getty Images

More Scrutiny of X-rays

The National Academy of Sciences will take on another issue of concern for travelers: The safety of body-scanner X-ray machines. The NAS is undertaking a study to make sure the radiation emitted by the machines is safe. The timetable for the study, requested by Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) hasn't been set yet and the machines remain in use. "I believe they are as safe as can be based on prior studies," Mr. Pistole said.

The study will look at "backscatter" X-ray scanners made by Rapiscan Systems, a unit of OSI Systems Inc.,OSIS0.56% which are largely used at smaller airports and resemble two large blue boxes that travelers stand between. No radiation safety concerns have been raised about millimeter-wave scanners, which are large, round, glass enclosures.

More Profit

World-wide, 2013 should be a good year for airlines. The International Air Transport Association estimates carriers globally to earn an estimated $8.4 billion in 2013, up from about $6.7 billion this year.

Yet, by the standards of just about any other industry, that represents puny profits: a net margin of just 1% in 2012 and 1.3% in 2013. Passenger demand will expand by 4.5% next year, IATA predicts.

Possible Service Declines

Smaller cities could see a continued decline in service as airlines move away from 50-seat regional jets—which have been expensive to fly with fuel prices high—and replace them with 70- and 90-seat regional jets. Those planes may prove too large to sustain some flights to small cities.

Big airlines also are likely to see large numbers of pilots retire in 2013 as pilots who would have faced mandatory federal retirement at age 60 five years ago now are bumping up against age 65 mandatory retirement. That may move pilots up from regional airlines to bigger carriers, leaving a shortage of pilots at feeder carriers.

More Beds and New Planes

Next year, United, Delta and American all will make lie-flat beds, previously seen only on international flights, on cross-country domestic flights.

Travelers will also see the Boeing Co.BA0.81% 787 Dreamliner on a lot more routes to and from the U.S. The new plane is built with composite materials rather than aluminum, allowing more-comfortable cabin pressure and slightly higher onboard humidity.

It will fly routes such as Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles and Denver to Tokyo; Houston to London, Amsterdam and Lagos; plus Lima-Los Angeles, L.A.-Shanghai and Chicago-Warsaw.

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American Airlines will get a new look.
Getty Images

New Look at American

As it tries to restructure, American also says it will unveil a new livery and logo for its fleet. The current unpainted aluminum with red, white and blue stripes dates back to the 1960s—the oldest livery still in use by a major U.S. airline.

American began leaving planes unpainted because it liked the shiny silver look, which became known as the "silver bird." Former CEO Robert Crandall kept it because paint adds several hundred pounds of weight, using more fuel. But now American's 787 Dreamliners and several Airbus planes on order have composite surfaces that must be painted.

A Boeing 777-300 was recently delivered to American with an all-gray tail with no logo. That plane, scheduled to begin flying passenger service in January, is likely to be the first with the new livery.

Even if American merges with US Airways, executives from US Airways have said they favor keeping the American Airlines name.

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